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Accused Rogue Admin Terry Childs Makes His Case
angry tapir writes "He's been in jail for seven months now, but former San Francisco network administrator Terry Childs says he's going to keep fighting to prove he's innocent of computer crime charges. Childs was arrested on July 12, charged with disrupting the City of San Francisco's Wide Area Network during a tense standoff with management. Infoworld has also conducted an interview with Childs."
Is this another 'Won't somebody think of the Childs?' story?
Thanks for just blowing away presumption of innocence, Taco :-/
[FUCK BETA]
"He's been in jail for seven months now,...
I love our entire "Innocent until proven guilty" thing. Unless you are on the wrong side of the celebrity wagon. I bet Paris would be out by now...
This article gives better reasons for those modems being on the network than previous stories. Doesn't seem so rogue now, does it?
he couldnt record it nor talk about the trial... not much you can do with 30 minutes
That there's a network admin somewhere that has giant ethical nuts. As anyone with even a day's worth of network admin/engineering experience knows, the loyalty of all network admins can be purchased with A. a fat paycheck or B. a threat of any kind from someone with authority.
Can you imagine even half of the network admins in the united states changing the passwords on their routers and shutting them down until Childs is released?
Yeah, I can't either.
I get the impression that his defense is not going to be "I didn't do it" but "I did it, but it's not a crime"
Personally I think he's holding out for the fat paycheck at the end of the inevitable lawsuit, and good for him. This whole thing is about the city of SF trying to save face.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
It seems to me the whole thing is really about a power struggle with a recalcitrant employee. Someone with a lot of authority in City Government sicked Johnny Law after this guy when he refused to give out the admin passwords. The city then calls up the media, lets out the dogs, scarlet letter, the whole 9 yards.
In reality, is failing to reveal an admin password a criminal offense? Have we really gotten so strange in this day and age that some passwords are now considered "property"?
I have no problem with him being fired. He sounds like a control freak who took the whole system to be his personal baby. But the charges against him sound more like someone is pissed off, and trying to take it out through the court system.
AccountKiller
CQ or Cadit Quaestio means "the spelling (or the simple fact) has been checked and double checked", so there's no need to check it again. As it was editorial markup, it should not have appeared in the published version of the story.
If something you mark as CQ later turns out to be wrong (because you haven't bothered to check), well that's egg on your face, isn't it?
Can someone even explain what he's charged with and what his specific actions were?
Refusing to do your job and inform management of passwords is not illegal. (It's pretty strange behavior, but not illegal.)
The only thing I can glean from reading both links is 'three modems', one of this was a DSL one he didn't set up for testing and whatnot, one of them was to operate his pager, and one of them was to link the city's network in emergencies. None of them even vaguely look like backdoors, but, more important, none of them were used as backdoors to a system he had access to anyway. (You don't install secret backdoors in cabinets in your office.)
I know Childs can't talk because his lawyers says not to, but there's a fucking document called a 'arrest report' that actually lays out charges against him and the specific actions he took that were in violation of the law. What are they?
Googling throws a lot of nonsense around, including the fact they've charged him with supposedly planning to use a planned power outage to do something bad, when said power outage wouldn't have affected those system. (And what 'something bad' is very vague.)
And, also, when the police search his house, they found weapons ammo. This is presumably relevant somehow.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
"On Friday, June 20, there was an altercation between Childs and Jeana Pieralde, the new DTIS security manager at the 1 Market Street datacenter in San Francisco. Until her promotion, she had been a city network engineer who worked with Childs"
.45 caliber bullets, but apparently no weapons"
Why didn't anyone tell Childs of this promotion, and who got her the 'promotion'?
"Childs disputed this interpretation of events, claiming in court documents that Pieralde was conducting clandestine searches of DTIS employee workspaces and had removed a hard drive from an office when he confronted her. He also denied taking photos of Pieralde"
Were there or were there not photographs taken of Pieralde by Childs. Was Pieralde authorized to conduct such audits and where now is this 'SF Owned cell phone', and what exactly did Childs intend to do with these photographs.
"the city stated that Childs was placed under surveillance and was arrested on the evening of July 12 as he was parking his vehicle near his home in the suburb of Pittsburg. At the time of his arrest, he was found to have $10,000 cash on his person and receipts showing that he had traveled to Sparks, Nevada, where he had looked at renting storage units. Following his arrest, police searched his house and workspaces. Police turned up 9mm and
Like, if he was under surveillance (and his cell/pager conficated), wouldn't they have noticed that he wasn't actually near a computer whern the pager went off ?
"Considering that normal bail for a murder case is $1 million -- one fifth of what Childs' bail was set at -- this filing was unexpected"
-------
"it is a mystery what exactly Jeana Pieralde was doing performing an unannounced, after-hours "security audit" in a City office other than that in which she herself worked. It was during that secret "security audit" on the evening of Friday, June 20th, 2008, in which Jeana Pieralde took a hard drive from another City employee's office and was photographed by Terry Childs as she did so"
"The office from which Pieralde removed the hard drive belonged to DTIS Security Officer Nancy Hastings (who naturally was not present in the office because the "security audit" was being conducted after hours.)" "Terry Childs had returned late to the offices (which do include his office and do not include Jeana Pieralde's office) at about 5:15 P.M. to find Jeana Pieralde (who does not work in those offices) taking a hard drive from one of Terry's co-workers offices. Terry photographed this act with the camera in his cellphone"
Did Pieralde really remove a harddrive. What was the name of this co-worker, where is this harddrive now. What motovated Pieralde to remove the harddrive. What's really going on here. Was Pieralde caught with her-in-th-cookie-jar, and someone decide to frame Childs to distract from something?
Well, congratulations on making up laws, but, no, there's no law requiring you tell people passwords, even to their own systems. At all. Barring some sort of court order requiring that, which does not exist in this case.
And that's not what he's charged with. He's charged with, essentially, doing his job, with lots of evidence of doing his job introduced as evidence.
Like keeping detailed diagrams of the network at his house....the network he built by hand.
Or installing network sniffers...commericial network sniffers that monitor the network for viruses and hack attempts, like he was supposed to as part of his job.
Or having a modem installed...that paged him in case of network problems.
Or configuring routers to not let people do a 'password reset'...in unsecured locations, like thousands of network admin do to routers they can't lock up to keep people from screwing with them.
Or confronting someone who claims they're doing an 'audit' of his systems and, as he claims, walking out with a hard drive. (They were doing an audit, but he didn't know that.)
They have decided all this means he was planning to bring the network down for some unspecified reason. Of course he could bring the network, any network admin knows enough to bring the network down. If they don't, they don't know enough to do their job keeping it up.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
What law says "you must hand out a password to your boss when he requests it or you will be prosecuted as a felon"?
The lawyer in the referenced articles has stated "The response to suspend him was arguably legal. The response to prosecute him is not." That means, if you don't give up a password, you can be suspended or fired, as you could be in any job, but that doesn't mean you can be prosecuted. If you use those passwords for nefarious means after you are fired, then yes you can, but so far the articles don't point to anything Child's did. There have been some wild claims, but InfoWorld has a special report page with articles that seem to call into question the accusations that are being leveled at Childs.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Courts are. Seems many people on Slashdot misunderstand the whole "Guilty until proven innocent," thing. What that is, is a simple way of stating how burden of proof works in our court system. In US courts, the defense isn't required to prove anything. The defense can present no case at all and the defendant can still go free. The reason is they have no burden. The burden of proof is on the state, the prosecution. They have to prove that the defendant is guilty. So they can't just walk in and say "We accuse the defendant of doing X," and leave it at that. They have to present evidence to prove their case. Thus by design a defendant in court is presumed innocent. Proof of guilt must be offered because a not guilty verdict the the default in absence of proof.
That's all it means. It is just a simple way of summing up our court system. It is NOT a command to the population at large. Individuals are free to believe what they wish, and use whatever standard for evidence they wish. People aren't required to view everyone as innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. They are welcome o hold opinions as they see fit.
So please, but the crap with this. If you think the guy is innocent, or wish to reserve judgment until later, that's wonderful. If others don't, that's also fine.
It also stems from the fact that we don't lock up innocent people in the western world.
Thanks. I just sprayed coffee all over my keyboard. Let me try this in a dialect you might understand.
Son, not only do we lock up innocent people here in the US but, Hell, in Texas we've condemned men to die when their defense attorney didn't even show up in one case, or showed up too drunk to stand straight in another. Up there in Yankeeland, they just caught a judge getting commissions from the prison for sending kids to jail.
Pound for pound, we lock up more people than the Russkies and the Chicoms COMBINED ever did. What, you think they're all guilty? You think Americans are just that much more sinful than all them godless heathens combined?
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
In the U.S., less than five percent of cases go to trial. That means that less than five percent of people ever test the presumption of innocence. Why? Maybe because they're guilty . . .
A little research will uncover the answer. Say the police break down your door one early morning, shoot your dog, and cuff you and your family. They have an informant that says you're involved in the meth trade. They take it to the DA, who can see it's bullshit, but DA's are measured in pleas and convictions, so he offers you a plea. You can cop to some minor class-D felony and three months in county. Or you can take it to court and put yourself at the mercy of 12 random citizens and/or a judge. Win or lose, you're out your job, your house, quite possibly your spouse, and your life savings. (Not to mention other details not suitable for this family publication.)
If you've got any sense at all, you take the plea. Why? Maybe "because you're guilty...".
That's how the presumption of innocence really works.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
...against plea-bargaining.
In the U.S., less than five percent of cases go to trial. That means that less than five percent of people ever test the presumption of innocence. Why? Maybe because they're guilty . . .
Amazing. You just asserted that presumption of innocence is a reality, and in the same breath insinuated all people who go to trial are guilty. If Einstein was right, and genius is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time, then your mental acuity is astonishing indeed.
The whole point of plea bargaining is to reduce the number of cases that go to trial. Plea bargaining works because you can't predict the jury's decision with certainty. If you look at the possible outcomes of plea-bargaining, it guarantees innocent men will end up in prison.
Suppose you're innocent. Suppose you're innocent, but unlucky, and the circumstances make you look guilty. Suppose you're an unpopular minority. Suppose you pray to the wrong god. Suppose you're just ugly. Suppose you just look like "that type." Suppose you don't come from around here. Suppose you've never caught a break in your life. Suppose there are any one of a million reasons why twelve random people off the street could drop you in a hole without any good reason and not lose any sleep over it.
Suppose you have children. Suppose you have family who depend on you. Suppose The Authorities come to you and tell you, "Boy, you don't push us on this, and we'll let you out in a couple of years. But if you make us go all the way, we'll make sure you don't ever see the light of day again, and when we put you in jail, we'll make sure Bubba is waiting for you with a dress."
Take a random sample of a thousand innocent men, and sure, some of those men will have the moral courage and fortitude to tell you to go to Hell and take me to trial. Some of those men will lack that courage, and take your bargain out of fear. Most of those men will run a quick and dirty risk/reward calculation in their head, and realize that the best option is to take the deal -- because that's how you arranged it.
Plea bargaining is a foul and filthy practice that guarantees a miscarriage of Justice in a certain percentage of cases. That's why not every Western nation allows it.
But your arguments have nothing to do with the facts -- they have to do with your fears. It's terrifying to live in a world where innocent men can routinely go to prison. It's terrifying to live in a world where going to prison means a good chance of rape and brutality. It's terrifying to live in a world where the authorities actually use that threat of rape against you without conscience. It's terrifying to live in a world where any random mouth-breathing high-school-droput with a badge can destroy your life with trumped-up evidence. It's terrifying to live in a world where you can hear cops threaten to club children, where you hear cops threaten to plant fake drug evidence against teenagers, where you see cops shoot prone and begging men in the back...
It's terrifying to live in a world where simply browsing YouTube can give you video evidence of all of this.
So, your cognitive dissonance blasts away at full force, and you tell yourself innocent people don't go to jail because anyone who goes to jail is not innocent. You pillow your head on that circular logic, and while you dream you live in a pretty and just world you make it that much harder for the rest of us to fix the problems...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
No, they're morons if they're positive he's guilty. Thinking he's guilty is a reasonable conclusion based on what evidence they've seen... so long as they remain open to revising they're view as more is learned.
People aren't courts of law, and we would not be able to function if we were held to legal standards of proof in all our beliefs and decisions.